October Surprise…

Six days are all that remains of the campaign season. Six days from today, Americans will go to the polls to elect a president.
It’s right about now that someone likes to drop an “October Surprise.”
The original October Surprise was a report in 1968 that the Democrats were close to an agreement that would effectively end the Vietnam war in time for the election pitting Hubert Humphrey against Richard Nixon. Reportedly, the Nixon team asked the North Vietnamese to wait for a Republican victory, promising an ample reward for their patience. Humphrey obviously lost, however there are many who think the Tet Offensive sealed his fate before the October Surprise could ever come to fruition.
The other notable October Surprise is commonly–and quite wrongly—referred to as the “original.” It is a conspiracy theory that charged candidate Ronald Reagan conspired with Iran to defeat incumbent Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Presidential Election. According to the theory, he Ayatollah would keep the American hostages in Iran until after the election in hopes of damaging Carter’s bid for re-election. In return, the United States would provide weapons and other armaments to Iran. This theory was never validated.
While there have been other rumored and lesser versions of this tactic (1992 Iran/Contra charges; 2000 DUI revelation), it’s talked about every election cycle–even this year. The surprise, however, is on the media more than it is George W. Bush.
Beginning this past Monday, news outlets were eagerly reporting the disappearance of nearly 380 tons of conventional explosives from an Iraqi weapons facility known as al Qaqaa. In fact, they weren’t just reporting it, they were tripping over themselves to get the news out there in the hopes of impacting the president’s re-election bid.
The New York Times was the first to report the missing explosives. The article on the “Old Gray Lady’s” website is four pages long. CBS News also planned to run an election eve broadcast on its 60 Minutes news magazine. The Washington Post, ABC News and CNN were also quick to lead with news of missing explosives at al Qaqaa.
The only problem is they were all only reporting part of the story. The part they all left out was the most critical part of all.
The explosives were missing when American troops had reached al Qaqaa on April 10, 2003–one day after the liberation of Iraq.
The only mainstream news organization that reported this story correctly, to their credit, was NBC News. They not only reported the time frame for the missing explosives, but NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski also questioned the timing of this report and stated that it seemed “highly political.”
That didn’t stop John Kerry from using this news to criticize the president. Even though he knew that this happened a year and a half ago, he still took the opportunity to attack Bush:

“You didn’t guard the ammunitions dump and now our troops are at greater risk. That’s the bottom line…Mr. President, for the sake of our brave men and women in uniform, for the sake of those troops who are in danger, because of your wrong decisions you owe Americans real answers about what happened, not just political attacks.” – Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) at a campaign stop in Rochester, MN.

John Kerry is knowingly giving the impression that these weapons went missing recently. By doing so, he is not only implying that the President is responsible, but also that American troops in Iraq were derelict in their duty which couldn’t be further from the truth.
John Kerry makes no mention of the fact that the missing explosives in question weren’t there when our troops reached al Qaqaa in the first place.
John Kerry makes no mention that American troops have captured or destroyed almost 400,000 pounds of explosives and weapons to date.
John Kerry makes no mention on how our troops continue to do the job we ask them to do on a daily basis with honor and distinction.
John Kerry is taking part in a smear campaign organized by his campaign and the media designed to derail the Bush candidacy. In short, he’s lying through his teeth and he knows it.
President Bush has come out and set the record straight, however.

“If Senator Kerry had his way… Saddam Hussein would still be in power. He would control those all of those weapons and explosives and could share them with his terrorist friends. Now the senator is making wild charges about missing explosives, when his top foreign policy adviser admits, quote, ‘We do not know the facts.’ Think about that: The senator is denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts…” – President George W. Bush.

If John Kerry is being deceitful, then Joe Lockhart is being an outright jackass. As a Senior Adviser to the Kerry campaign, Lockhart issued a press release stating the following:

“In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame. Instead of distorting John Kerry’s words, the Bush campaign is now falsely and deliberately twisting the reports of journalists. It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous.”

“Pathetic excuse?” The only thing that’s pathetic here is Lockhart. He and his boss would do much better to come out and admit that the weapons weren’t there to begin with. These guys will do or say anything. Lockhart’s statement looks even dumber in light of a new development.
The Washington Times is reporting as of 10:30pm EDT that Russia–and not George W. Bush–may have ties to the missing explosives. Russia. Not American troops. Not Bush. Not Cheney. Russian special forces moved explosives out of Iraq—and into Syria.
I can’t wait to see how John Kerry spins this with his “stronger at home, more respected in the world” crap mantra. Knowing his track record, though, he’ll flip-flop it first and then dodge it. He could do the right thing by stepping up to a microphone and saying he was wrong and that he wants a bi-partisan investigation, but he won’t do that.
That would require character and backbone–something that Candidate Kerry doesn’t have.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com